I would like to just give my 2c on this cases airflow strategy.
The case has 4 fans. 2 in front intake, 1 next to CPU blow out, 1 on top blow out.
One thing I noticed was that 1 on top really doesn't give you much benefit as the case is... *drum roll* negatively presurrized once you put PSU in it. I did simple test of turning the top one off and noticed air getting sucked in from top. (do they even test this things with PSU?) In effect, the fan goes against natural physics of flow. (PSU blows out so you have 3 blow out and 2 intake)
In fact, it actually improved my CPU temp by 2-4c. Also, this is one fan in the case that can't be esometric mounted. (okay the 2 in front is nearly impossible too unless you have right tool).
In my case, I try to separate CPU and PSU as much as possible when temperature is involved (Zalman 5700 does wonderful on this respect). Right now the front intake is at 1100 RPM rear exhaust is at 1600 RPM (with PSU running somewhere around 860-900 RPM in idle)
Minus HDD & the 1600 RPM fans, the rest is just dead silent from foot away (other than rushing air).
You gotta give it a shot.

EDIT: I just tested under different circumstances. Lowered front intake to 900 RPM, rear exhasut at 1300 RPM, CPU at 1300 RPM. Temperature rose up moderate 2c at CPU, 3c at GPU, 1c at PSU compared to previous while sound has been reduced even more. Other than air, only thing left to do is HDD now.

I've got the same case and have really abused it in terms of cooling for at least a year. Briefly, I'm running dual Athlon MP 1.2GHz and a 15K RPM hard drive, the latter decoupled by suspending in a 5.25 inch bay using elastic bungee cord. Video is a fanless Visiontek GeForce4 MX 440. I'm using a Nexus PSU (my most recent addition) and have Panaflo fans in all mounts running at 5V.

The system runs stable but is awfully hot! CPUs run high 50s (all temps in C), video card roughly 55, motherboard (and presumably case temp) high 40s. The hard drive casing is not too hot to touch, but any hotter and it would be.

I also notice that the top fan, as you observed, is blowing virtually nothing at 5V. However, at 12V it does blow a significant quantity of air. I believe this is because the PSU fan runs at a constant speed (well, it varies by PSU temp, but *not* by the voltage regulation on the other fans). When the Panaflos run at 12V, their airflow is collectively much greater than the PSU's, so not much negative pressurization occurs. However, at 5V the Panaflos cannot compensate for the negative pressurization introduced by the PSU fan. Does this make any sense?

Given the above, what is my next step? I could of course do nothing since this rig has been running well despite high temps. On the other hand, would it make sense to raise the intake fans to a constant 12V while leaving exhaust fans at 5V to eliminate the negative pressurization and thereby increase cooling efficiency?

_________________The definition of success is having the freedom to be yourself. (Robert Kiyosaki)

I've got the same case and have really abused it in terms of cooling for at least a year. Briefly, I'm running dual Athlon MP 1.2GHz and a 15K RPM hard drive, the latter decoupled by suspending in a 5.25 inch bay using elastic bungee cord. Video is a fanless Visiontek GeForce4 MX 440. I'm using a Nexus PSU (my most recent addition) and have Panaflo fans in all mounts running at 5V.

The system runs stable but is awfully hot! CPUs run high 50s (all temps in C), video card roughly 55, motherboard (and presumably case temp) high 40s. The hard drive casing is not too hot to touch, but any hotter and it would be.

I also notice that the top fan, as you observed, is blowing virtually nothing at 5V. However, at 12V it does blow a significant quantity of air. I believe this is because the PSU fan runs at a constant speed (well, it varies by PSU temp, but *not* by the voltage regulation on the other fans). When the Panaflos run at 12V, their airflow is collectively much greater than the PSU's, so not much negative pressurization occurs. However, at 5V the Panaflos cannot compensate for the negative pressurization introduced by the PSU fan. Does this make any sense?

Given the above, what is my next step? I could of course do nothing since this rig has been running well despite high temps. On the other hand, would it make sense to raise the intake fans to a constant 12V while leaving exhaust fans at 5V to eliminate the negative pressurization and thereby increase cooling efficiency?

Well since you are in thi forum... you are interested in silenece... right?
I would highly recommend not to turn the top fan at anything over 5v.... It is definitely noisest thing in system usually. On top of that, you want to add a little more intake by reversing the fan in top. (thus making it intake instead of exhuast)
Front intakes are a little better with its location but not any better. Max I would go is 7v.
I am not too familiar with athlon coolers... (despite the fact I have one... that isn't my silent rig) But from my experience, that little bugger runs pretty hot no matter which version you have it seems... (1800+ XP at home). Get a good quality heatsink (SLK-900 looks very yummy but there are others). Instead of keeping let's say 60c heat generator, 50c heat generator is definitely easier for given airflow to keep constant.
In this case (in most cases) I would think hottet temp generators are all at the back top 1/4 of case... (AGP graphics/CPU/PSU) One way for me to efficiently cool it has been by getting the hottest component's air directly out to rear exhuast fan (5700cu from Zalman... I don't think there is one for athlon though). Maybe you can make a shroud around cpu to direct the air flow or some divider. This keeps general temp of case low which in turn helps the temp of CPU as well. The top reversed intake now takes air in for PSU as well as case air flowing around (other than CPU) can be exhausted by PSU than...
FYI, my 2 front fans are running at 6v, top one reversed at 5v, rear exhaust & CPU fan running at 7-7.5v, and PSU is running below measurable for me (4.6v or something is my guess most of time).
All the fans are Vantec stealth 80mm.
Also, there is 5v fan mounted right on top of ATI-Radeon 9500 Pro modded with Zalman HP-80A, HDD no vibed and another 5v fan mounted right under it to cool the HDD.
Another way to reduce heat is to keep the voltage low for CPU core. 1V seem to reduce about 7-12% of CPU temp on hotter running proc. (1.5V reduction in mine causes about 4-5c temp drop with current setup)
CPU temp stays from 39-50c, HDD from 33-40c, GPU temp on heatsink next to chip is 39-46c. (ambient temp around 23-27c and that 4c difference doesn't differ enough to be measured so I know there are sufficient cooling effect on system)
Try rotating fan around for top fan first to see if temp improves on your system. It did on mine by about 1-2c right there for CPU.

The Panaflo fans really aren't very loud even at 12V, but that said I will still be trying some of the strategies for strategically dropping the voltages. Thanks for the info.

The strange thing is that at 12V the air blown out the top isn't warm at all! I find this strange because the hard drive is mounted in one of the 5.25 inch bays a little below this fan and I know it runs hot, plus the CPUs are running in the 50s (Celsius). The PSU fan blows warm air, which I guess is to be expected, but given the tendency of heat to rise as well as all the warm componentry below the top fan, it puzzles me as to why the top fan blows out cool air.

_________________The definition of success is having the freedom to be yourself. (Robert Kiyosaki)

jinu117 -- you've done lots of reduce noise, but there one more thing you could do: swap your Vantec Stealth fans for Panaflo L. Lots of people might say there's no real differece, but to me it is easily heard. Even when running under 7V. If you have bunch of them, well, it is cumulative. In the US, you can still find them at $4 each or something like that.

jinu117 -- you've done lots of reduce noise, but there one more thing you could do: swap your Vantec Stealth fans for Panaflo L. Lots of people might say there's no real differece, but to me it is easily heard. Even when running under 7V. If you have bunch of them, well, it is cumulative. In the US, you can still find them at $4 each or something like that.

jinu117 -- you've done lots of reduce noise, but there one more thing you could do: swap your Vantec Stealth fans for Panaflo L. Lots of people might say there's no real differece, but to me it is easily heard. Even when running under 7V. If you have bunch of them, well, it is cumulative. In the US, you can still find them at $4 each or something like that.

Actually, I do have about 5 panaflos... L... I didn't like its noise characteristics... (more irregularities than Vantec at similar voltage).
I also had to run the fan typically 100-150 RPM higher to keep the same temp. Frankly, at 5-7v, I think winner is Vantec. Now, Papst might be different story and I shall give them a shot as well in near future.

Since the Sonata seems to have problems, I'm turning my attention to the Cooler Master 201. Could I request some further advice and clarification.

- I'm not sure how all of those fans are being controlled. Is it with the Vantec or the Enermax or something else? What would be recommended? I hear the Vantec has QC and noise problems.

- Would this case be a good candidate for a complete Acoustipack treatment? Would the standard do or is the deluxe necessary?

- I will be installing 4x120 Seagate hard drives. Would it be better to mount 2 in the lower 3.5" bays and 2 in the upper 5.25" bays or all 4 in the lower bays? BTW, no DVD/CD-ROM will be used inside the case.

- I'm not exactly sure regarding the recommended fan setup. 2 front inputs at 7v. Rear output at 7v and top at ? direction and ?v.

Since the Sonata seems to have problems, I'm turning my attention to the Cooler Master 201. Could I request some further advice and clarification.

- I'm not sure how all of those fans are being controlled. Is it with the Vantec or the Enermax or something else? What would be recommended? I hear the Vantec has QC and noise problems.

- Would this case be a good candidate for a complete Acoustipack treatment? Would the standard do or is the deluxe necessary?

- I will be installing 4x120 Seagate hard drives. Would it be better to mount 2 in the lower 3.5" bays and 2 in the upper 5.25" bays or all 4 in the lower bays? BTW, no DVD/CD-ROM will be used inside the case.

- I'm not exactly sure regarding the recommended fan setup. 2 front inputs at 7v. Rear output at 7v and top at ? direction and ?v.

TIA

1) Vantec one was noisy and I had problem with one of the port just like in reveiw I read somewhere.
2) I used enermax for a while and went just to Zalman fan control as my daugther kept playing around with settings (2 year old almost)
3) Acoustipak... I would rather work on other part of components before trying it out if I had to start over... Its added value are marginal.
4) Problem with 4 drive is that you will have to figure out a way to cool them. This leaves you with...
a) Putting them in the drive cage where it is fan cooled... imagine all the vibration though... (shudder)
b) Putting them all suspended using NoVibe3 on 4 external 5.25 bays... and devise a way to get air from bottom to top drive somehow...
c) Putting them in removable HDD rack with silenced 40mm fan... (make it 40x40x20 instead of 10 or 15 they typically come in and lower voltage one at that)... Still some vibration but the mass do help.
5) It really depends on how each system reacts IMHO. With Vantec fans I have front 2 at 6v now, rear one and CPU at 8v, top fan is disabled, and the other fans (GPU & HDD coolers that are ghetto modded) at 5v.

BTW, I am eyeing Kingwin case right now as the extra exhaust fan might be able to make me run at 6v on rear too as well as taking out their 3.5" bay easily and putting something I can create in instead (isolated HDD mount in essence) Over all, I think I can make Kingwin case quieter than current CM-201c... (or even the new Thermaltake III sounds like a good candidate granted all fans must be swapped out)

Quick follow-up. Are the 5.25 or 3.5 bays removable on the 201? Also, what's the possibility of using the the blow hole fan, sucking in, and directed toward the front of the case for cooling the 5.25 bays?

Well, my 201 just arrived. Yipppeee, but I'm already stumped. How do you get at the front and top fans? Do you just pop out the screens by force or is there a trick? Any assistence is greaty appreciated.

You probably already opened it but...
After opening side panels you will notice there is opening to left and right of the fan cover for screw.... Granted you have tip magnitized drive, you can do it without opening the front cover.
I bet my comment is already too late anyways...

Wow, what a great tip, jinu117. I've read many articles/reviews/threads regarding this case and you're the first one to point this out (at least that I saw). Now, all I have to figure out is how to keep it attached without the screws.

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